En ny modell för att stärka kommunikation och samverkan mellan universitet och näringsliv
As a result of today`s competitive situation, the demand on the rapid development of research has increased. Both universities and companies are realizing the importance of a functioning and well-developed cooperation. A close collaboration and communication between universities and the business community has in many studies been shown to be very important for business development and knowledge transfer. The purose was to examine how communication and collaboration between universities and industry can be developed and strenghthen on the basis of innovative thinking. In order to initially identify the perceived problems the authors studied how communication and cooperation manifests itslelf today between the two parties, what does not work and how the existing tools for communication and collaboration look like today. The study was conducted based on a qualitative approach and the empirical data have primarily been based on interviews with represantatives from both universities and industry, but also by a smaller invironmental scanning and the authors own experience. The results indicate that the perceived deficiencies concem the establishment of cooperation but also the communication quality, for instance the feedback on the performed. There also appears to be difficult to achieve a high degree of win-win situtation as a result of cooperation. The part that belives that it does not work is the students. None of the responding seems to see the full potential of interacting with each other; Although there are many reasons and much to gain from a partnership the empirical data shows that the parties focus on only two motives for cooperation. The students focus on the opportunity for jobs after graduation and the representatives from the companies see the universities as a recruitment channel. The existing tools for communcation seem to work in a very limited extent. The authors have as a result of this thesis generated a proposal of how communication could be improved in order to respond to the perceived problems. These ideas are presented in the section of suggestions for improvement.